Coronavirus testing chief says ‘no way on Earth’ US can test 5 million a day, despite what Trump says

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/29/coronavirus-testing-chief-says-no-way-on-earth-us-can-test-5-million-a-day.html?fbclid=IwAR0w02862Jo9B3Ys1RnofeOJSnDZWyqfUeHuifui9a1ESwHUSAxt5kLqmxI

William Feuer
Christina Wilkie
Published Wed, Apr 29 202010:03 AM EDTUpdated Wed, Apr 29 20201:52 PM EDT

There’s “no way on Earth” the U.S. can test 5 million people a day for the coronavirus, the government’s top testing official said in an interview, just hours before President Donald Trump vowed that the country would be able to test that many people daily “very soon.”

“There is absolutely no way on Earth, on this planet or any other planet, that we can do 20 million tests a day, or even five million tests a day,” Adm. Brett Giroir, assistant secretary of health who is in charge of the government’s testing response, told TIME in an interview he gave Tuesday morning that was published later in the evening. The interview took place before Trump’s eye-popping pledge about testing.

Speaking to reporters the following day, Trump denied having said there would be 5 million tests per day, but he added that he does believe there will, in fact, be 5 million tests per day at some point.

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The U.S. will be able to test 8 million per month by May, Giroir told Time.

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The U.S. has run just 5.7 million total Covid-19 tests since the beginning of the pandemic, according to data compiled by the Covid Tracking Project. The most tests the nation has run on a single day was 314,182 on April 22, according to the volunteer project designed to track testing data launched last month by The Atlantic.

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The capacity to test broadly for Covid-19 will be key to preventing a resurgence of the virus as states ease restrictions and reopen businesses, public health specialists and state officials have repeatedly said.

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